Notes From Perry Street: Getting Lost on the Way to Being Renewed

By CORBY CARLIN WINTERS, Ambassador at Large

At the Winters House, Casa, Villa, Retreat or Wild and Wacky World, we call it “hitting your wall.”

You may call it something else at your house, but we call “it,” that.  The thing you feel when you know you can’t take one more step, one more move, one more broken “whatever.”  

It is when you’re flat-out “spent.” 

To be honest friends, I have felt that way more than once in the last several years. Starting over in life is not easy.  Losing my parents, who were such strong Godly pillars in my life, and simply having to make so many decisions about our life and life’s work has been flat-out exhausting at times.

We have faced a series of “First World Problems” lately. The dishwasher won’t drain the water; the stove/oven died the day before our 30th anniversary; and Winters was reading in his favorite chair when a slow drip of water started hitting him on his forehead … apparently from the upstairs bathroom area.

So, on this day, I am grateful for the friends who stand beside us and face our future, or “giants” as Winters calls them.  I am thankful for those friends who say, ”How can I help?,” and “What can I do?,” or simply words of encouragement such as,  “I love your latest post or Winters’ interview.”  

In his book, Everyone Needs A Sam, Winters writes that many will go to the mountaintop with you on your climb to success. But when trials and failures hit, and you start tumbling down that mountain, many will disappear. 

Winters writes about those faithful few who will join you in your lowest and darkest valley. While you are looking for the light switch, they have brought flashlights. 

This past week was a week of reflection. That can be a good thing, but only if you come out the other side with more perspective and understanding.  And so I did, have more insight and perspective that is.  I wish some of the events of the past could have been different, but they weren’t and if they were different I would probably not be sitting here typing this post. So again, I have a deeper appreciation for the here and now.

I recently read a phrase on an artist friend’s business card the other day, it simply read: “Sometimes on the way to the dream you get lost and find a better one”

I love that.

I think it can be so true, often we have a plan. We think we know what we want and we head out on the journey, dreams packed, prepared, and ready. We have great plans. However, along the way you find an even better one.

New passions, new purposes, and new opportunities may pop up right in front of us and we must be open and willing to see the new dream God may have for us.

In the Bible, it says “He (God) will give you the desires of your heart.” The way I see it, he will give you the desires of your heart now, or change your heart’s desires.  I really do think it is that simple.  

So if you have “hit your wall,” you have lost your “whatever,”  you feel completely spent and your dream is just out of reach, ask God for eyes to see and just wait, any moment your friends will start turning on their flashlights.

You are not alone.